Welcome to the DDS-1024.
The Council, the origin of the board is joining the board.
We have the role of Councilmember Willard.
Councilmember Willard.
Here.
Presentation of Master A.U.C.U.C. County.
I do that.
Good evening. My name is David.
I'm going to turn it over to you.
Here at the end of the advisory council.
Noting to say that the council is actually an idiot.
The council is on a mission to make a decision to the county board of the district.
And all of the most closely are guided by the county area agency.
We have forty one was actively to serve and look and Walla Creek join us to the
county bureaucracy employment services we yeah aging on behalf of and serves
is a channel nation on agency on aging and improving and the county. We also want to thank the kids for this opportunity as well.
Thank you for having me present tonight is an update of the plan of aging County.
What you hear is that members are getting 65,000 on the head.
I think the neural count will be 60 years to the right.
over the 20% from 2016. Do you believe that the number and how the number has been in the 20% of the 45% can have a hundred times that of the 65% of the total.
and the number of older as a role as a role of adaptation. It's the time of the early of top.
And the thought of the model is that the role that we have in the age of strategy and role of action and depth of in my point of view in the future, you know, is focused on the vision of the human being and the role of a knowledgeable strategy.
and provide the implementation of the groups that are focused on doing all of that, um,
staff by employees, professional employees, as who have a project that has a good experience,
I want to thank all of you for
your support and for your
leadership on this committee.
We are
implementing the math plan for
CMA.
It is deeply involved in
that.
We are a member of the
committee of the university
That is that we are a part of the senior community that is a part of the community.
The process now of beginning to work on what the local playbook will look like and what
the concepts will be for an expected presentation of the Board of Supervisors by the end of
March.
We have gathered a significant amount of input
from across the county.
There's been a lot of research being done
and effectively we're targeting five goals
and the five goals that we are targeting
are consistent with the five major goals
of the master plan of aging at the state level.
So briefly housing, health, equity and inclusion,
caregiving and then affording aging.
And if I can just move along and spend a little time talking about it.
Housing for all ages and stages.
Affordable housing options in the county are limited.
The County Housing Authority provided us statistics, and we have that coming in from them regularly.
In the middle of 2023, those 62 and over, there were over 19,500 people on a waiting
list for affordable subsidized housing here in the county. That's just the county, 19,500.
So it's an issue we have. The fastest growing segment of the unhoused or homeless community
here in Contra Costa County are those 60 and over. They're not the largest group today,
but they are the fastest growing. Health Reimagined is a result of spending a significant
time with the county health group and discussing issues regarding behavioral health and then
dental health.
Inclusion and equity, not isolation.
It's a function of making sure that all services are available to the various communities within
our county.
The information that developed the strategies was a result of a lot of input from a lot
of people, but also the State of California did a statewide survey and we were provided
with information on what the survey, it was an online survey, what those results were
for Contra Costa County.
communities are great. They provide baseline information. Largely we reflected kind of
what the median was relative to the counties in the state of California. We didn't feel
completely comfortable with just taking that information so we organized focus groups.
We know that some of the communities that are high users of our social service nutritional
programs do have challenges frequently when it comes to internet access and effectively
using that.
So we organized 13 focus groups throughout the county for focusing primarily on communities
that are heavy users of our social services, heavy users of our nutritional services, and
communities that may have economic challenges that we need to be aware of. We need to reach
out to them. So, we spent approximately two hours in each one of these focus groups. We
had three additional focus groups which were specifically for the disabled. As needed,
We had interpreters to make sure everyone was understanding what the process was.
And through that, the inclusion and equity, there are frequently programs that H3, which
is health, housing, and homelessness division within the county, some of their programs,
people were just not aware that they were available.
And that came out in the focus groups, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to
do it.
We are looking at that, making sure that, for example, the two that stand out for myself
that I was involved in on these focus groups was in Bay Point and in North Richmond.
And clearly in Bay Point, there are programs that these people could have been involved
in that they just did not have awareness of, and they didn't and the outreach did not go
far enough so that they were in a position to participate and get the services they needed
and deserved.
So that will be communication, making sure people are aware of what the services are
and how they access those services will all be part of the master plan, the local playbook.
Caregiving that works, I think anybody that follows the senior community realizes caregiving
is critical, and it is such that volunteer caregiving requires significant support.
So those folks have respites when needed and know that the community is solidly behind
them.
And that'll be part of the program we have.
People on fixed incomes have significant challenges, whether it be housing or nutrition.
So affording aging, we will have programs come out for that.
So I will give you an update.
Hopefully I'll be able to come back in four or five months when the playbook is done and
share that with you.
But maybe a minute or two if you have any questions, but again, thank you for the time
tonight.
Oh, thank you very much.
As an aging senior, it's good to hear that somebody cares about us.
Does anybody on the council have any questions?
I don't see any questions.
Thank you so much, and we'll look forward to your next good news. We'll see you. Thank you
Next on the agenda is a presentation by the vision for new Mitchell County Educational Center and welcome
Thank you everyone. I appreciate being here. We're excited to share our vision of the Mitchell Canyon
Education Center. My name is Gary parkhurst and I am a volunteer
for the Mount Diablo Interpretive Association
as well as a docent at the Mitchell Canyon Visitor Center.
Before I get started, we'd like to take a minute
and recognize and remember that the Mount Diablo
is the ancestral home of five different indigenous people.
The Wilton Rancheria, Bay Miwok,
Confederate villages of Leishwan,
Northern Valley Yulecut and the Muwakmaw people.
And so it's good for us to just remember
that this is their ancestral home.
So let me give you a little context about MDIA.
We are a, excuse me, 5013C.
We are a cooperating agency with Mount Diablo State Park.
And through an array of funding,
we provide educational programs that help foster
appreciation for, and enlightened use of, Mount Diablo.
We are an all volunteer organization.
And in 2020, our board said,
maybe we should look at a feasibility study
of improving our visitor center.
And you'll see why in a couple of minutes.
Preservation through education.
That is how, that's our mission.
And it is how we feel we ensure that future generations
can enjoy what we look at in Contra Costa County every day,
and that's the beauty and the history
and the mystery of Mount Diablo.
And now, as a community, we're in a unique position
to have a lasting and impact on our community
through the Education Center that will broaden opportunities
for everyone regardless of age, background or abilities.
Mitchell Canyon is a destination for many people.
We get over 35,000 visitors a year
and they come for a variety of reasons.
If you take a look at this slide,
you'll see that there are a whole host of activities
from very avid hikers to very family oriented activities.
Hiking to the summit, Eagle Peak and the waterfalls,
particularly this time of year, by the way,
They're gorgeous.
If you've ever not ever taken that hike,
I would encourage you to.
We have mountain bikers, trail runs.
When I was a docent a couple weeks ago,
there were six groups that took off
to do a trail run to the summit.
Wildflower hikes, butterfly hikes, tarantula hikes.
Get in early if you want, because they book up fast.
Picnicking, creek exploration.
There's so much to do.
It is truly a destination for everyone.
So how many of you have been to Mitchell Canyon before?
Anybody?
No?
It's nice to see that you have, Cindy.
I would encourage all of you to go.
However, if you go, this is what you
would see as our visitor center.
It is a 19-year-old, and I like to use little air quotes,
temporary trailer that's been around for the 19 years.
It's only 400 square feet.
It does have a ramp, so you can get wheelchairs up to the visitor center, but if you were
to put a school in there or any kind of hiking group, it would be very, very crowded.
So it's time for us to move beyond a temporary 19-year-old trailer when it comes to the visitor
center and now education center.
So what's missing?
Well, there are a lot of things missing, as you could probably see from that last slide.
There's no real significant indoor space, and with the new space, we would have an ability
to have stationary and rotating exhibits that meet disability guidelines and speak to the
diverse nature and diversity, if you will, of our visitors.
It will also be able to accommodate school field trips for the first time.
So school buses can't get up Mount Diablo.
the roads are too narrow, they're too windy.
We are developing a place where,
and I'll talk more about this in a minute,
school field trips could actually come
with the school buses to Mount Diablo
and introduce students to the beauty of Mount Diablo.
The native plant garden, I'll talk about a little bit more.
It's there right now.
Cindy, did you know we even have a native plant garden there?
That's because it's behind the trailer,
and we'll talk about that.
I'm not surprised, most people don't know.
We don't have the large outdoor space,
and we'll talk a little bit about why that's important
in a multimedia room.
So let me share with you our vision of what the Education
Center looks like.
This is an aerial view.
This doesn't have a light on it, but I
will tell you that the diagonal building that you see
is the Pavilion.
That's where the trailer currently sits.
The visitor's center would be new.
There's an existing building there
which would be torn down
and the visitor's center would be there.
The restrooms are current, they would simply be updated.
The new education center itself would be 1500 square feet.
It would be ADA compliant.
It would include an outdoor pavilion
that would significantly increase access
of Mount Diablo State Park
for people of all backgrounds and all abilities,
particularly public school kids.
The new Education Center would make it possible
to accommodate school field trips for the first time.
The center would provide indoor and outdoor education,
as well as natural history
and environmental science learning opportunities
to all visitors.
This is an idea of artist rendition, if you will,
of the interior space.
It would include state-of-the-art displays
that highlight plant and animal diversity
found on Mount Diablo,
as well as historic and current relationships
that we have with indigenous people of Mount Diablo.
The little room in the back that you see with the chairs
is a media room that would be used for classrooms
and rotating exhibits.
The pavilion is a critically important part
of the New Education Center.
It would provide a covered area with displays that create
a meeting space for groups.
So today, we have, oh, gosh, probably three or four
different groups that come on Saturdays and Sundays to hike.
And when they meet, they meet in the parking lot,
dodging the cars that are coming
because there's no place to gather.
If you were to visit the park, Mitchell Canyon,
any day but Saturday and Sunday,
the visitor center's closed,
so there's no information for you.
The pavilion will provide information for people
when the visitor center is closed
to help them understand what they're about to see
as they get ready to go out on their adventure.
This is an idea of how the school buses
would be able to interact.
Now today, where you see those kids
exiting off the school bus, it's just gravel.
It comes from C-MEX, the quarry behind us.
And it's so uninviting.
It's just not even, it's hard to explain actually.
I would tell you that today the school buses
have to park about a mile away if they come at all.
And so that's why we don't get very many.
We do get some school field trips
where the parents drive.
But for many of our communities, that's not possible.
And so those communities are ones
that we're actually focusing on.
To the degree that MDIA itself has granted to Mitchell Canyon
Visitor Center, to the Education Center,
$10,000 in the first year to fund school bus field trips
for those areas that need it.
So this is the native plant garden.
And yes, it sits behind the trailer.
Now you can see the back of what would be the pavilion.
And the native plant garden is really important
because when we do get people engaged in it,
it helps them understand what they're about to see
before they see it.
So the plant garden shows what's in bloom today.
It shows what's green and what's not.
And it has no leaves and has leaves.
You get to see what you're going to see before you see it.
So it's an integral part of the entire experience.
So this particular slide is not one of my more interesting
slides, but it's a really important one.
Because the new education center will
be built as a model for energy efficient
environmentally responsive buildings
located in urban wildfire zones.
All of the materials will be locally sourced.
And we will use prevailing winds to cool and the sun
to provide flight.
So there you have it.
That is our vision of the Mitchell Canyon Education
Center.
Now the real question is, why am I here?
And how can the council and perhaps the city help?
Well, the first is to provide MDIA with a city endorsement,
and there's a big thank you there
because that's actually already occurred.
Through the Contra Costa County Mayor's Conference,
all 13 mayors signed a resolution endorsing
and supporting MDIA, and I share a huge thanks
to the city of Walnut Creek for being a part of that.
There may be, and I don't know the answer to this,
financial support through the Walnut Creek Community
foundation as it relates to education,
because this education center is going
to provide an opportunity to educate children
on the beauty of Mount Diablo.
So I'll be exploring that a bit.
You all can help us by spreading the word.
So through your own social media accounts,
through the cities, newsletters, whatever it might be,
I have content.
So if you need content for anything
that might be involved in the newsletters
or any way of spreading our story to the community,
we would be very grateful.
And lastly, just personally,
if this project resonates with anyone,
those in the audience,
we would encourage you to join our mailing list at mdia.org.
And if you'd like to contribute financially,
you can do that on the website as well.
We're trying to raise $6 million.
And I would tell you that in the first 14 months
at the end of 2023, we've raised $2 million.
So we are a third of the way there.
We're at a point where we will actually start
some of the construction on certain parts of the project,
particularly the pavilion, this year.
And where is that funding coming from?
It's really coming from the community.
People, individuals, but also organizations
like, say, Mount Diablo that donated $30,000,
or the Clayton Business and Community Center
that donated $50,000, Safeway, $10,000, C-MEX, $20,000.
The state granted us a million dollars.
So we are very much being embraced by the community
at large, and it shows in the fundraising
that we've done so far.
So I thank you for the time.
I encourage you to take a look at our website.
And as you feel so inclined, support us in any way you can,
and I'll open it up for any questions
if you feel we have time.
but yeah, we do.
Are there any questions?
No, they're smiling at me.
That must mean they enjoyed the performance.
So thank you very much for coming
and looking forward to seeing all of that built.
We are too, thanks so much.
Thank you.
So next on the agenda is the consent calendar.
Does any council member wish to pull an item?
Seeing none, does any member of the public
wish to pull an item?
Seeing none, may I have a motion?
I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar,
items two A through two E.
Second.
Excellently done.
May I have a roll call vote?
Council member Wilk.
Aye.
Council member Silva.
Aye.
Council member Francois.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem Darlene.
Aye.
Mayor Haskew.
Aye.
Motion carries unanimously.
Okay.
Item number three is public communications.
This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment
on items not on the agenda.
Under the Brown Act,
the council cannot act on items raised
during public comment communications,
but may respond briefly to statements made
or questions posed.
Request clarification or refer them to staff.
Consistent with section 9.5 of the city council handbook,
30 minutes will be allocated at this time
for the public communications for items not on the agenda.
Additional time for public communications
for items not on the agenda will be provided
at the end of the meeting, if necessary.
If you would like to make public comment,
would you please kind of line yourself up
behind the dais and come forward?
Is this ever happened?
I'm stunned.
Okay, this is...
Oh, wait a minute.
I was early stunned.
We do have somebody coming.
Welcome.
filming this for legal reasons.
OK, so my name is Scotty, and I came here
to discuss the attack on free speech and our First Amendment
rights being stripped away by Jewish supremacists.
You shut down Zoom comments at the behest of the ADL
because some Jews' feelings got hurt.
I'd like to remind you there is no hate speech exception
to the First Amendment.
And cutting off comments for speech you disagree with
is in direct violation of the oath of office
that you all swore to uphold.
So I'm here today because people like you
think we're scared to show up and show our face
and call you out in person.
And I dare you to shut me down.
I will file a 1983 civil rights lawsuit so fast
that you might as well break out the city's checkbook
and prepare to settle, because you and I both
know that we will win.
You people disgust me.
And if you think following orders from those kikes
at the ADL will save you from being held accountable,
you're in for a rude awakening.
The Goyim know, and it's only a matter of time
before yet another inevitable Jew expulsion.
Whites are awoken, and if these kikes
don't realize that their time is very limited
our lands, then we might just have a Holocaust for real this time.
If you want more information on what these Jewish tunnel rats are doing to subvert our
nation, visit gtvflyers.com and watch Europa the Last Battle at EuropaTheLastBattle.net.
Fuck all you Jews, fuck the ADL, hail Hitler, white fucking power.
Yeah if you count him as the embarrassed person. Mayor I would just like to say
something now that public comment has ended that we live in a free country and
there is free speech and that means we have to live to listen to awful and
heinous comments like we just listened to and I would like to apologize on
behalf of the City Council and anybody that had to hear that horrible horrible
speech. This is America. Unfortunately, we do have laws that protect people from
saying anything as you just saw that. So again, I apologize on behalf of
humanity. And we apologize to you, Kevin, because this is clearly so directed at
you and so vile and not who we are as a city. Okay. Dog gone. There we are. Okay
we're up to council member and staff announcements reports on activities or
requests. Are there any closed session announcements? Madam Mayor there were no
closed session say so there are no announcements. Thank you city manager. I
I do not have an update this evening.
Okay.
Anybody on council want to give me an update?
Why?
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
So along with Council Member Silva,
serve on the Housing and Community Development Committee
of the Council, we heard an item from staff
that will come to the council, I believe,
at our March 5th meeting about submitting an application
to the state Housing and Community Development Department
to allow Walnut Creek to get a pro housing designation.
And the effect of that would be
some of the affordable projects that we're seeing in the city
like 699 YVR would get priority in terms of state funding.
If the city were to be given this designation,
we need something like 30 points
and staff has amassed so far,
something like 45 points and is still working.
I'd like to thank community development department.
We had Claire live from the city attorney's department.
Also my missing Stephanie Brydon
from the housing department.
It was a real team effort among staff to get this together.
And I want to express our whole council's appreciation
for that.
I serve as a council's liaison to the chamber of commerce.
There was a meeting last week of note
are some upcoming events.
The East Bay Women's Conference is on March 5th.
It'll be here in the Lesher Center
for the second year in a row.
There's still tickets available.
There's gonna be great speakers.
It's an empowering event.
I encourage everyone to attend if they're able.
March 5th at the Lesher Center.
Then on March 26th, the Chamber is hosting
the Future of the Region, as I mentioned before.
That'll be at the Library in the Oakview Room at 3.30,
and I believe the Mayor is participating in that event.
March 16th is the State of the Chamber event,
also at the Oakview Room,
but that will be at 7.30 in the morning, starting.
Visit Walnut Creek has a focus on sports, tourism,
and sports economics,
and I'm excited about one event in particular,
the Mount Diablo half marathon,
which will take place on March 2nd.
It will be a run from the summit to Arbolado Park.
So a net decline of something like 3,500 feet.
And it will take a pounding on your quads, I'm told,
but it should be a breathtakingly beautiful run.
That's on March 2nd.
There's 1200 registered runners so far.
The sponsors of the event were so encouraged
by the amount of interest that they've signed up again
for next year.
And 50% of those folks are coming from outside California,
including I'm told a strong contingent
from the Denver city attorney's office.
There's also a basketball tournament
that will be hosted at the ultimate field house
from April 12th to April 14th.
And that concludes my report.
Thank you.
Who wants to go next?
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you for reporting
on the Housing Community Development Subcommittee.
I would just add to that that our work
in becoming a pro-housing designation from the state
really reflects our commitment to being a place
that is welcoming to all.
And so in addition, this week is the Cal Cities Board Media
or the board meeting of the League of California Cities,
and I serve on that board.
And one of the things that we are strongly supporting
is Proposition One, which is on the March 5th ballot.
And it will provide funding that is desperately needed for,
it's a bond, funding for mental health
and homeless services in the state.
And particularly if you think about the number of veterans
who are suffering from homelessness
as well as mental health crises.
And so that'll help with that.
I had the opportunity last Thursday evening
to meet with the 15 members of our youth commission
and it was a great opportunity.
I know my colleagues will be subsequently meeting with them
and I just wanna thank those 15 commissioners
for their dedication and interest in being in the city
and they're working on a plan to sponsor a cultural event
sometime later this spring.
And I'm looking forward to that because again,
that demonstrates that we are a community and a city
that welcomes all.
You will report on Bass, can't,
Mayor Pro Tem represented us at the opening
of the Bass Cancer Center about 10 days ago,
but I want to mention that it really demonstrates
that when it comes to economic development,
there is a wide range of things going on in the community,
but the opening of Bass Cancer Center,
and prior to that, the John Muir Health UCSF Cancer Center
makes Walnut Creek truly it strengthens our position
as a healthcare center of the East Bay and the region.
And I would remind everyone that
Lesher Center for the Arts is going great
and there is a great show that you can see
currently at the Lesher Center.
It opened last Friday night.
It's called Mystic Pizza.
It is a musical that is based on the great movie
and it closes on the 25th this weekend.
So get your tickets and go.
It is a hoot.
And finally, I will mention that March 5th is Election Day
and don't forget to vote.
Okay, I'm gonna ask Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you, and the Bass Cancer Center
was a fascinating tour.
It's out in Shadelands.
They had been open for a while,
but because of COVID and everything,
they finally got their ribbon-cutting ceremony.
And then I got a tour of the facility
and some of the things that they're doing out there
really are revolutionizing some of the care,
like for prostate cancer, they have the ability
to do radiation that's hundreds of times more effective
than what some family members have gotten
in years gone by.
So it was just great to see that.
Council Member Silva and I were both there,
along with a whole host of folks to celebrate that.
And I got to meet the new,
the doctor who's opened a fertility clinic at it,
and hopefully they'll have a groundbreaking
or a ribbon cutting here soon
because that's another great addition
to our economic development out in the area.
So the rest of the things I want to talk about
are all sustainability all the time.
So MCE met last week.
A couple things to note, PG&E does have a big rate increase
going when it affect last month
that will raise most homeowners electricity
by about $34 a month on the average.
MCE is keeping their rates the same,
and so we are continuing
to be much more affordable than PG&E.
MCE has an award called the Charles McGlashan Award
they give every year to different partners
in sustainability.
And one of the partners this year was Eden Housing
for a development that they did.
It's an existing affordable housing development,
and they went through and worked with the electrical system
and helped all the residents in that affordable housing
retrofit so that they have far more efficient electric heat
and water heaters.
And it sounds like it's a win-win, it's sustainability,
it's affordability for those who need it the most.
And one of the other things that MCE is looking at this year
our legislative hunt for money. In the process of electrification, one of the
things that will make it easier to convince people to go for an electric
water heater is you don't think about your water heater till the one you have
stops working. And so if you have a temporary water heater that you can loan
to somebody whose water heater has just gone out to give them a week to figure
out what to do about their electric, you know, electrifying their water heater,
that'll get us another 10 years of getting a gas water heater off out of
the system. And so we're shopping for that money right now, and hopefully we'll
be able to put together a program next year to do that. And then the last
sustainability thing was, you know, what I just said about the water heater? Well,
when we came back from Patagonia, we had that experience with our heat, with our
gas heater for our house and we went through we came home and it was 57
degrees in the house so we turned the heat on and woke up in the morning it
was still 57 degrees so we knew we had a problem and we called I had done some
research on the heat pump a while back and I called one of the vendors who was
most responsive and they came right out and they said yes we can do that and so
now we have a heat pump that is running off our solar and it works pretty darn
slick. So I'm glad I had done the research at a time because that was a
pretty desperate couple days there. We got the new heat pump in, so that's your
sustainability update for the day. So Kevin, I am still just reeling from the
inappropriateness of that public comment. I am really, as you know, short on words.
I have no words to describe the disgust that I feel about that situation.
So as your reward, it's your turn to tell us what you're going to do.
Well, thank you, Mayor.
And actually, my phone's been blowing up with people that are texting me with their apologies
as well.
I apologize that we have to hear that kind of abusive speech in 2024.
And I think that it shows that, as we just heard from Councilmember Silva, that there's
an election on March 5th.
vote does matter. It matters for who's in office, it matters for who our representatives
are both locally, statewide, and nationally as well. And it's important. And we have to
make important choices because there's an important future of our country that is at
stake in whichever direction that we go. And again, I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment
and freedom of speech, and that means we have to put up with things that we don't like as
well. So again, I apologize to the community for having to hear that. With
that, let's move on because we've got city business to attend to, right? So the
mayor and I met with on our committee for ad hoc for outdoor dining and
outdoor dining will be coming back. I know that it's been curtailed a bit but
we've got winter of course and we've got utility work down Main Street and so we
are meeting to see how we can bring this back and it will be coming back because
the council's already voted on it coming back,
it's just in how we can work with the different,
with the different restaurants in bringing it back
so that this really can be on a permanent basis
that everybody can enjoy.
So more to come on that one.
The mayor and I attended the rebranding of ARF.
The former Animal Rescue Foundation
is now branded as Joy Bound.
Same great process with being able to match cats and dogs
with families and veterans that need them.
They're a great community service that we have
right in our backyard.
And we look forward to many, many more years
in working with this great group.
And the last point I have is that as a board of director
member for the County Connection,
we're talking about what we're going to be doing
for our next legislative agenda.
And on that front, we're going to,
the few of us are going to Washington DC,
including myself, and this is pretty much of an annual trip,
in talking with our congress members and senators
and the transportation department in Washington
of how we can get additional grant funding
for our public transit to get cars off the road,
to get people in seats on our public transit,
and we will be getting grant money.
So I will be heading there in April for that one.
That's my report.
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for your grace.
Okay, so I had to spend three days in Monterey
at the CalCog Conference.
It was hard work, actually.
We talked about, the CalCog is,
I can never even remember their official name,
but it is a regional government organization,
and we talked about how to redefine regions
to make various things happen in communities.
Cities can't do everything.
Counties can't do everything,
but we can rearrange ourselves
so that people who have common organizations, entities,
who have common interests can in fact do great things.
It's largely influenced by transportation,
and so we of course talked about
how we're gonna fund the roads when everything goes electric
and we are no longer paying gas tax.
And there was another really interesting presentation
on managed lanes.
Those are the lanes where we have like on 680
and other things with the express ones
and the ones that charge you money
if you're in the wrong place
and you don't have your little gizmo
and you don't have a carpool.
So it's gonna be a wave of the future
because I think that's how we're going to start to figure out
how to make the roads work even better.
But in the meantime,
I had to share the Accessible Transportation Task Force
on Zoom because I'm now the chair of that organization
and that's put together with Measure X money
for Country Custod Transportation Authority
is sort of nurturing it.
So there I was in a little room
with my little computer trying to find out
who of the people who were in attendance
were raising their hand.
But I think we got some good work done.
On the city staff side, there is a tradition
called the Bake Off.
And they invited the council and I'm not stupid,
it's really good food.
So I went and I believe the winner of the Bake Off
is, but I'm not going to embarrass her.
But she did make this incredible bread pudding with rum sauce.
Yes, OK.
But there were just thousands of other really good things.
I must have put on two pounds just attending that.
I also went to Viamante to represent the city,
Viamante being the place in the orchards that's
got the senior citizens.
and I was an experiment
because they'd never had the mayor come before
and speak to him.
So I went and I was terrified.
It was actually a lot of fun.
They asked really good questions
and they laughed at my jokes.
What more can a speaker want?
Let's see, I have, I think I'm done.
So we're on to the next item
and that is a consideration
of the council priorities update
and a staff person or two will be available.
Good evening, mayor, council members,
members of the public.
My name is Carla Hanson.
I'm the deputy city manager.
The item before you is the 2023, 2024 council priorities
update and the recommended action is to receive the update.
So almost about a year ago to the day,
This council set five strategic priorities listed here
for the next two calendar years.
And each quarter we come before you
and we present on what work has been done
in the last quarter and what work is on the horizon
for each of your five priorities.
My presentation to you this evening
will go through each of these five priorities.
Talk about the work finished,
the work that's still to come.
I'm gonna pause after each priority for questions.
And although I'm the sole presenter up here this evening,
And we do have lots of staff here in the audience who are ready and willing to answer questions
that you have about the work done on your priorities.
So with that, we'll get right into it.
The diversity, equity, and inclusion fitting for this evening, priority is focused on continuing
to build an inclusive community that welcomes diversity.
The city council added a position in the last budget update to oversee and manage our DEI
program and to help them with that.
We put out an RFP for consultants to create a program, a DEI program that's going to be
focused on training and creating an organization that is welcoming, belonging, and makes people
feel valued in their diversity at work.
We received 32 responses to that RFP.
interviewed and selected a consultant and that contract will be coming before
you in March for your consideration. Our human resources department continues to
train our staff, our DEI training that is mandated for staff, and we do these
trainings often, so we're capturing all of our new employees that are coming on
board. Everyone is getting DEI training. As part of broadening the representation
on your city commissions and committees.
We really wanted to focus on the process,
how people are getting noticed about the opportunities
that they can volunteer for their community,
and make the process a little bit easier
for them to engage in.
So our city clerk's office spoke with our commissioners
and got some ideas on how to really focus
on broadening and getting different sources of methods
to get out to people. With that, we received 49 applications for our eight
commissions this time around, which you all know that very well because you
interviewed many of them this this afternoon. That our city clerk says
that's about a 10% increase from the last time we did our commission outreach,
which is a big success. Over the fall, we implemented a new city website, so the
full city's website and then three subsites which included arts and
recreation, the police department, and economic development. And this update was
focused on really using inclusive language and really focusing on... I'm
sorry, a little lost in my notes here. So the new websites reflect a more
inclusive approach to online communications. In addition to simplifying
text, there's a new translation tool that makes the site available and
and for a far expanded audience.
And then we've also got a lot of analytics
to measure how we're doing with our new website and subsites.
We continue to expand our cultural event offerings.
And in April, the Bedford Gallery
will host a Rediscovering Native American exhibit,
which highlights inspiring stories
from contemporary indigenous people.
Our Rising Tide internal team continues their work.
And this is a group that's focused
on inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
They recently implemented a chosen name policy,
which allows employees to choose or have a chosen name
that may differ from their legal or birth name.
And they're looking forward to expanding work
in other policy initiatives, including public noticing
and language translation services.
Rising Tide is also assisting the Arts and Recreation
Department to pilot trainings, materials and signage
to create sensory inclusive spaces in the community
were art, Center for Community Arts.
And then this summer, Rising Tide kicked off
a book club for employees.
And staff met bi-monthly to discuss readings
from the notes from a young black chef, which
was an engaging conversation about race, culture, food,
and acceptance.
And then moving on, Rising Tide is
going to host an annual book club.
They also are continuing with their Tide Talks
and Did You Know newsletter, which
are ongoing initiatives to keep employees informed on DEI topics
and learning opportunities.
We continue to partner with our two libraries in town
to help amplify their outreach on special events,
such as multicultural live from the library offerings,
and we're also broadcasting all of those on YouTube
and Walnut Creek TV.
And we're also highlighting special displays
for events such as Black History Month.
With that, any questions on the DEI initiative?
Thank you, Carla.
Can you or someone on staff talk a little bit
about how you expanded the recruitment process
for commissions and kind of what effects we saw from that?
I'll let the city clerk answer that one.
Yes, sorry, Susie Martinez, city clerk.
So yes, I met with Betsy Burkhardt,
our communications manager, and we really took a look,
a broader look at where we could recruit.
So the list where we recruited to,
where our outreach list was greatly expanded.
I can go through that list if you would like.
But additionally, we also made a change
to how our application process.
We were relying on NeoGov,
which is really meant for staff
or for employees of the city.
And so that seemed to be a big burden
because it was asking for a whole lot more information
and the candidates really needed to provide.
So I think that was also a major reason
why we received so many applications
because I would always get feedback
about how burdensome our application process was.
That's helpful, so that was about a 10% increase, you said?
At minimum, I would say.
And then can you just give some examples?
You don't have to go through the whole list
of sort of what we were doing for outreach before
and then what we did this time.
OK, so some of the, I guess, we were more direct,
for example, I would give the example of pros.
We reached out to the Walnut Creek Soccer Club,
the Adult Softball, the Little League, the Open Space
Foundation.
We reached out, not just for pros, but all of our PTAs,
which we hadn't done in the past.
We reached out to the chief's advisory board member
applicants, Walnut Creek Magazine, League of Women
Voters.
And then we also, I think Carla did mention this,
we met with commissioners at the quarterly mayor chair meeting
and asked for their ideas and did a lot more push
on social media.
That's great.
Thank you all for those efforts.
Mayor Pro Tem?
Thanks.
And so when the contract comes to us
in March for the DEI consultant.
I know there were a number of recommendations
that came from the task force some months back.
Are they going to be looking at those
and trying to figure out what all else
we need to include in our program?
Yes.
Okay, I look forward to that.
And I must say, it was really fun
interviewing everybody today.
That was a great field of candidates.
So whatever you were doing, Susie,
whatever nooks and crannies you were exploring,
It worked out well and we had some really great,
really great candidates, so thanks.
Any further questions?
No, okay, please proceed.
All right, so our economic development
and job creation priority has four components
and I'm gonna go through each of the four.
Our economic development action plan is a two-year plan
with strategies to promote economic diversification
and capitalize on the city's economic strengths.
You all saw a draft of this plan in May.
After that, there were continued discussions
with Walnut Creek's partners
to really help identify actions
where they could provide support
and overall economic vitality
in collaboration with the plan.
From there, a work plan for the action plan
was built by our economic development team
and that is attached to Attachment 3 in your packet.
And some highlights from this work plan,
Engagement of stakeholders on the design review guideline
standards for both residential and non-residential mixed use
projects, selection of a consultant
to develop economic development marketing materials
and brokerage packets, and initial outreach
with the automotive industry.
And this work plan that was attached to this staff report
will continue to come to you quarterly
with updates on what is happening
with the economic development work plan and action plan.
Staff is working on defining a jobs housing balance
for Walnut Creek using the data inputs here on the screen.
And this work continues and aims,
we're aiming to bring back a definition to you in winter 2025.
The goal of Permit Streamlining is to create an easier
and more efficient customer experience
for those coming and using our services for permits
or development applications, et cetera.
And we're doing this by really having city staff
serve as proactive guides for our customers
through our city processes,
and then offering both online and in-person options
for permit types through a virtual
front counter experience.
I've had some success so far.
All solar permits are now available online.
And electronic permit review is to be completed
in spring 2024.
Over the fall, you all adopted permanent SB 9 regulations.
In addition to the website design process
that I mentioned before, improvements
have been made to the development services web pages
to respond to customer feedback, clarifying information,
and enhancing the customer self-service options.
In addition, the development services team building
initiative continues, and will improve understanding
and ownership and cohesion on the team,
and through that will improve our customer service.
Staff is also working on developing
objective design standards and refining the design review
process, with the goal of streamlining and clarifying
the design review process for new development.
Staff received feedback from council in July
and plans to bring back the discussion
about the design review process
and objective design standards this summer.
I will pause there for questions.
Looking for any questions?
Not seeing any.
Moving on.
Your next priority is environmental sustainability
and climate action.
You all adopted a sustainability action plan in July
and a climate emergency resolution on the same day.
Since then, we've been building this sustainability program
and work plan with the help of our new sustainability manager
and climate fellow.
30% of this work plan is community outreach.
So we really wanted to understand
how are people getting their information
and what they want to know about sustainability.
So we put out a community survey over the fall.
And folks are most interested in resources and incentives
that will help them be more sustainable.
And they're getting their information
through the nutshell, of course, our eco-newsletter
news articles, and video was also one that was highlighted
as something that they wanted more of to understand more
sustainability options for them.
Another thing that we found interesting in the survey
results was that it emphasized that residents who live
in rentals or who are renters, who live in condos or townhouses
that might have an HOA were also interested in learning
how they can be also more sustainable if they're not
necessarily owners of single family homes.
In the sustainability action plan,
there were nine near term actions
that needed to be in progress by 2023.
And the good news is all of them are either implemented
or in progress as we head into spring 2024.
With that, I will pause for questions.
Well, apparently you're doing really well
because nobody is sticking their hands up.
So keep going.
No breaks.
All right, back in November, 2022,
65% of Walnut Creek voters approved
a 10-year half-cent sales tax measure
to fund current and future quality of life needs,
including some of these critical infrastructure projects.
The biggest one being the Heather Farm Park Aquatics
and Community Center.
Happy to say this project is in full design process phase
swing.
You're gonna hear a lot about this in your next item
on your agenda this evening.
And subsequent meetings after this,
there are a number of topics that Council
will provide direction on, mostly on design aspects.
With these decisions that you make,
the design process will continue
and likely to conclude in spring 2025,
which then construction will begin
and hopefully conclude in 2027.
The other two projects are lights at the Tice Field,
Bidding and construction is going to start,
bidding is at a start in spring
and we're hoping to start construction in summer 2024.
And then the ball fields at Heather Farm Park Project
is a turf field project to replace the natural turf
at Heather Farm Fields one and two.
Design work is underway along with CEQA and water analyses
and work is anticipated to be completed in 2025.
Just want a quick question. Um
The ball fields and the Heather Farm Aquatic Center are the is that being done as one CEQA document or did we end up splitting it?
Two two we are splitting it. Thank you bunny ears. Thank you public works. Thank you
Moving right along
So public safety and social wellness this priority integrates existing and new programs that are provided by multiple
departments throughout the city and the scope of work here is in five different
areas and again I will go through each of the five. Walnut Creek was instrumental
in developing and creating the A3 program which is named to indicate that
anyone in Contra Costa County can access timely and appropriate behavioral
health crisis service anytime and anywhere. This program as we heard
earlier this year had a huge milestone in December, 2023.
And is now operating 24 seven, 24 seven.
So 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The program receives about 200 calls
and sends about 330 mobile teams each week.
It's helped over 2,900 callers in 2022.
And that number is expected to grow to about 4,500 a year.
The Walnut Creek Police Department continues to manage
and participate in these three programs that are dedicated
to responding to mental health challenges
and connecting residents experiencing homelessness
with services.
As these challenges, as we know, may overlap sometimes,
these programs are aimed to address these issues
in a holistic way.
These, all these programs have become part
of our department operations and our city operations.
So these continue as part of your priorities,
but also just as part of the operations in the city.
So the Walnut Creek Police Department
is aiming to prevent crime before it happens
by analyzing trends and proactively adjusting
their patrol presence.
They're planning to deploy technology
that provides real-time analyses of crime trends
to support and direct law enforcement resources.
The platform will accelerate evidence-based decision-making
and enhance investigatory capabilities,
streamline analyses, and share information
with other police departments.
Over the holiday season, additional officers
were deployed downtown during our major shopping
season that we have to provide both education and enforcement.
And they were on bike, on foot, in marked cars
and unmarked cars, and provided a highly visible presence,
and also providing, as I said, engagement
with community members, both on the education side
and enforcement side.
The police department is aiming to develop a formal crime
Prevention Program with a focus on community policing and they're on track
to hire new crime prevention specialist in spring 2024. They also continue to
build on existing partnerships with the community and like with events like
Coffee with a Cop. Their most recent one was in Rossmore and featured a
traffic safety presentation. The city is working toward improving traffic transit
and pedestrian and bike safety with the goal of providing a way for all
residents to get where they're going in destinations in a safe and comfortable manner.
You all adopted the local road safety plan, which included a policy that aims to eliminate
fatal and severe injury collisions in Walnut Creek by 2034.
The city was awarded a $240,000 federal grant to help develop a traffic safety action plan
that will implement the local road and safety plan.
The Safe Routes to School study is nearing completion
with the goal of really increasing school trips
made by active and shared transportation.
So this is walking, rolling, biking, carpooling,
and promoting these as viable everyday options.
It also aims to improve pedestrian
and bicycle infrastructure to increase student and parents'
confidence in safe walking and biking.
And also, the Safe Routes to School study
is really gonna maintain our open communication
that we have with the community about traffic safety,
but also provide more accessible and educational materials.
In July 23, the police department
used a community engagement tool
that allowed the department to collect anonymous feedback
from post-contact text surveys to gain insights
on officer interactions throughout the community.
This was a 90-day pilot.
Over those 90 days, there were 500 survey responses.
84% reported a positive view of our police department,
and 91% reported being treated with respect
by our police officers.
And then this last bullet here, another major milestone
for our organization.
We have fully implemented the Active Bystandership
for Law Enforcement program in our police department.
And instead of just telling you about it,
we're gonna show you a video.
Hi, my name is Jamie Knox and I'm the chief of police
for the Walnut Creek Police Department.
We talk a lot about policies and following state laws
and the problem with that is
where's your training to back that up?
What the ABLE Project does
and what the training curriculum does
is it really teaches officers and professional staff
on how to recognize, not misconduct,
but when someone is maybe having a bad day.
When maybe somebody is about to cross the line.
It's prevention.
So not only does it teach that person to recognize
when a colleague is in trouble,
it gives them the tools that they need
to understand that it's okay to help someone else,
help a colleague get out of trouble, and also to be helped.
Hi, my name is Rob Patton.
I'm a retired lieutenant
from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department
and former bureau chief with POST.
ABLE is an intervention program designed
to reduce harm and transform culture, right?
So we have a lot of policy out there
related to duty and to intervene as well as law on duty to intervene but
what's unique about this program is how the training targets the agency head all
the way down to the newest recruit and everybody in between so when you talk
about cultural ship from the inside out you can you have no choice but to be
successful outside because you have that internal support that foundation to be
successful and that's ultimately going to reduce harm and build more trust and
credibility with the agency and that's why people take on the badge to
essentially do just that.
Hi, my name is Officer Robert Rosas. I'm with the Walnut Creek Police Department.
I've been here for four years. Wouldn't it be great if before you ever get to the
point of having to intercede it just doesn't get there because you prevented
a situation from escalating to that. That is the whole point of active
of bystandership.
Sometimes we're afraid that officers
might be reluctant to get involved with another officer's
call.
Able training allowed us to reframe that and step away
from the, hey, don't think of it as stepping on the officer's
toes.
Think of it as just another safeguard.
You're trying to help out that officer.
And if you're wrong, you're wrong.
No big deal.
But if you're right, you just prevented that officer
from getting into more trouble.
and essentially like you helped yourself out too
because like, hey, you're interceding,
you're doing what your duty calls for you to do.
Hi, I'm Tori.
I've been with the Walnut Creek Police Department
for 16 years.
I think the benefits of ABLE will be able to be conveyed
to the community through our dispatch center,
which is usually the first point of contact for any citizen.
I think having this training is just an added tool for us
in dispatch to make ourselves better
and to keep the high level of integrity
that we have at the department
in the forefront of our minds.
My name is Brandon Lindkake.
I'm an officer with the Walnut Creek Police Department.
We're allowed to speak to our other officers
regardless of rank and position
and check each other when things are going south
or maybe compliment when things are going good.
And I think if other departments implemented ABLE
nationwide, statewide, countywide,
wherever I think the whole culture would change
in a much better way.
My name's Scott Huntsbury,
and I'm a retired FBI special agent.
I think it speaks to law enforcement in general,
that we spend a lot of time preparing for the demands,
the physical demands, the tactical demands of the job,
but we don't give a lot of consideration to the moral,
ethical wear and tear the job brings with it.
That's what ABLE does.
We're teaching police officers around the country
how to intervene to prevent harm,
not only to their partner or to themselves,
but to the communities that they serve.
So we all know that ABLE is about intervention,
but what it also is is a leadership development opportunity.
For example, we've all seen those supervisors, managers,
see something or hear something,
but opt to not do anything about it.
So then subordinates think it's okay
to partake in that activity.
That begins to permeate a little bit,
And all of a sudden you have a little bit of a culture
that's not so positive.
And then the big mistake occurs
that costs your agency a reputation,
an officer potentially losing his or her job.
And of course we have cases where people lose their lives.
So when that big problem occurs
and it lands on the chief's desk
or him or her gets that phone call,
they're asking themselves, how did this happen?
And what could have we done to prevent it from occurring?
able can help do that. But it also builds your bench out so when people through attrition begin
to retire or promote up the chain of command you already have a culture where line level officers
and supervisors are used to having conversations critical crucial conversations in the moment
that prepare them for those specialized roles as a supervisor when it's incumbent upon them
to say something when they see something and set the tone that aligns with the
the chief's mission, vision and values.
It's the least questions I've seen from this council in 12 years just...
I don't have a question.
I do have a question, except it actually covers all of the five categories, so I didn't want to make it seem like...
We're doing a lot, and we've really accomplished a lot in making more progress every day on our goals.
I don't want to leave the impression and I might have to ask the City Manager this question,
I don't want us to leave the impression that Measure O is only being used for infrastructure.
Can you elaborate on how we're utilizing Measure O dollars? And I know this was just an aha after
seeing the presentation to try to you know talk a little bit about how we're spreading the dollars
across our priorities. Yeah we Dan Bucheye, City Manager, happy to elaborate upon that.
You know, that said, there is a significant amount going
that is planned to go towards infrastructure.
In fact, about three quarters is allocated
or planned to go to infrastructure.
Of the remaining quarter, it is being used
to help support effectively every one of these priorities.
As part of the last budget process,
which is the first time Measure O is allocated,
we added five police officers,
added the crime prevention specialist.
We help support additional library hours
beyond what the county base amount is.
We are funding crossing guards and also supported
a couple of positions at the Lesher Center
to help augment our robust and important arts program.
So those are a few examples that come to mind.
There's a handful of others,
but as you can tell.
Sustainability programs that we're about to initiate.
That's a good point.
We added a position for sustainability.
Homeless services.
I'm sure I didn't forget about her,
but yeah, sustainability, homeless as well.
Those are some other programs.
Kevin, did I see?
I was just going to comment, that's great,
those kind of videos, like picture of a thousand words.
And I saw something a couple of months ago
that was a feature on ABC of the police department
of just new forms of collaboration and ideas.
And I would love to see that really be able
to be promoted as well because I just thought
that was a terrific piece too.
And just well done to our police department,
police chief and executive team leadership.
Matt.
Thank you, Mayor.
If the chief or one of the captains could speak to this,
I didn't see it in the presentation,
but when I went on a ride along last fall,
there was something that Sergeant Coffin did
after he had an interaction with a member of the public,
where he would input information through an app
in terms of the identity of the person that he interacted
with, kind of what the resolution of the call was,
sort of similar to that survey result that you talked about.
I'm wondering if you could just elaborate a bit on that.
Hi, good evening, Jamie Knox, Chief of Police.
You're probably referring to what's commonly referred to
as the RIPA Act or the Racial Identity Profiling Act.
So after any contact, a police officer would input
a variety of categories based on what they knew
at the time of the contact, the subjects age, race, gender.
there's a variety of things and then we submit that
to a monthly report.
And do you get feedback from the state
or some other department on that
at some point during the year?
I believe we just received our first annual report.
We did report that out to the Chief's Advisory Board
and we could certainly share that information
with the council.
So it's a relatively new law then Chief and?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Glad we're doing that.
Welcome.
Thank you for kind of walking through all of the parts
and one of the other things that I've been seeing
kind of not only with what you're talking about here today
but what we're talking about up here
is we're also looking for those opportunities
where you have something that does more than one priority,
something where sustainability also helps promote
housing affordability, which promotes diversity
in our population and things like that.
Have you guys ever gone through an audited
where those interactions are between the priorities
or?
I think they do all interact.
I can speak for sustainability in that it does interact very
much with the housing element, the safety element that's
going to be updated pretty soon here,
and all of our emergency management type
of programs, which is, again, part of your priority.
So yes.
Yeah, I guess.
I always see it there, but I always think we don't color it.
We don't promote it enough because everything that I see
in creating a healthy policing culture also reflects
on our DEI objectives.
And so.
If I could just add to that to elaborate,
you know, when your counsel sense priorities,
obviously you set the higher level goals
for what you want to achieve.
And as Carla's noting, I think one of the outcomes of that
is this cross threading across the entire organization
because we don't just necessarily divvy these up
by a department or a division.
We look at what needs to be accomplished
and who do we pull together, not only internally,
but from the community as well and partner with.
As you saw, we have several partners involved in these.
So there really is a cross knitting,
there is overlap between these priorities
and that really starts with you setting the priorities
and providing context for what you wanna achieve.
And then we try to pull together a really comprehensive
and cross-functional team to make that happen.
And it's there and I appreciate it.
I just think sometimes we could tune our horn
on that a little bit more.
So we're not quite finished.
Not necessarily a priority,
but part of the five priorities,
but very much a priority for the city and the state.
Your council adopted a housing element in January, 2023,
and we're happy to say that the state certified
that housing element in October, 2023.
So now the work doesn't end there
just because it's been certified.
We have six program areas with about 135 programs
to get implemented over the next 10 years.
So needless to say, our housing division
and our other divisions throughout the organization
are gonna be very busy implementing the housing element.
So wanted to make sure you were updated on that.
Now we're finished.
Okay.
If there are no questions and good on you, you found some.
Our job is to receive this, and I don't know that that means we need a motion.
Do we need a motion?
You may want to open public comment, Mayor.
Oh, maybe I do.
That wasn't, the last one wasn't very successful.
I would like to have some pleasant public comments if anybody has any comment that they
would like to present before us.
Okay.
He's done the entire audience.
Okay.
I think we're safe.
All right.
We're moving on.
So, it's on our job to receive it.
Do we need a motion of reception or we just smile and say we did it?
Thank you.
We did.
All right.
Does the council need a break?
Yes.
We will reconvene at 740.
So we need a break.
Thank you.
back and we're off to and running to our next item which is new aquatic and
community center at Heather Farm Park schematic design presentation package
what a cool title and I bet I know who's going to give the report you do
good evening mayor members of the council for the record Kevin Safeen
director of arts and recreation yes I'm going to talk about the new aquatic and
Community Center at Heather Farm. Before I do that we're going to give you a fair
amount of detail and I thought I would step back for a minute and say this is
an exciting time. Some of us have been working on this for 15 plus years which
includes staff, past and present, councils, past and present, commissions,
consultants, and community members and so this is a big deal and so when we get
into the details you'll probably as I do want to get into some specifics but for
me, I'd like to take a step back and say this is going to be a fabulous facility, no matter
what. So we're excited that we have this opportunity to come back to you and present
this again. It's been a while, so thank you for the opportunity. So why are we here? We
are here to present to you and receive your feedback on that schematic design package,
which you'll see tonight, for the combined facility. You'll see an asterisk by the word
That's because tonight's focus is primarily on the building plans, the site plans, and
the outdoor gathering spaces within and around the park, the aquatics program, the aquatic
facilities, the deck, the pools, will be talked about next meeting, which is March 5th.
And so while people may be here looking to talk about that, we look forward to more conversation
about aquatics at your next meeting in March.
So with that, you will see this slide later in your presentation.
I won't go through this in detail.
preview of what we're looking for from you as we get through this presentation.
So we're looking for your direction on these six items and again we'll bring
this up later, but specifically we're talking about the building. You'll see a
couple of different schemes that we present tonight. We'll talk about what
features you like exterior, what do you like inside, talk about the event garden,
talk about the patio, talk about the atrium. So the lakeside room there are
lots of opportunities for us to gather your feedback and so we look forward to
that at the conclusion of our presentation.
So the agenda for those who haven't been
to this kind of meeting before,
staff will go through the schematic design package.
We'll take your questions from council,
open to public comments, and then again,
we'll look for your feedback and direction
at the conclusion.
So the outline for tonight is I'm gonna go through
the project overview, give you some background,
talk briefly about community engagement,
and then the design team, which is represented
by staff from Nolentem Architects, or Project Architect,
in our RRM Design Group, which is our landscape architect.
They're here this evening to talk about the specifics
of the presentation and the proposal.
And then we'll take questions and comments.
And then we'll talk about where we go from here.
So a bit of background, your park's your future.
You see the logo in the top left.
Halfway through the presentation,
that logo will disappear because we're no longer
in your park's your future.
While we're in your park's your present, how about that?
So you will see that as we go forward,
But for background, in 2018, even though I said
this project really started 15 plus years ago,
really the year parks year future package started in 2018.
So with direction from council,
staff looked at three facilities in three parks,
which is Civic Park, the community center,
the Shadelands Art Center and Heather Farm Park,
specifically Clark Swim Center
and the Heather Farm Community Center.
We did a whole lot of analysis on the program
in each of those facilities,
whole lot of analysis on the facilities within those parks
and the council in 2021 determined that Heather Farm Park
was the focus of where we're going in the future,
specifically the community center and the pool.
And so we began the conceptual planning in April of 21
and wrapped that up with the presentation
to the council in February of 23.
And so you'll see what that concept looked like
at that time, which we've evolved since then.
And so where are we going from here?
We will continue the design process.
You'll see another slide about this later.
Continue the community engagement process.
The whole CEQA documentation will conclude hopefully by April of next year, so a little
more than a year from now.
And then, as Carla Hansen said, we will hopefully start construction in the summer, by the summer
of 2025, concluding in the summer or fall, maybe winter or 27.
2027 is what we're saying, is when we'll be done.
So from that start of the Your Parks, Your Future project, we engaged a whole lot with
the community.
This is only the part from July of 2018 through February 23.
You'll see another slide later about what we've done since then about engaging the community.
So without going through all these, there were a number of different activities that
we engaged in, open houses, community events, pop ups, advisory committee meetings, joint
meetings with arts and pros, a lot of city council meetings, and then stakeholder meetings.
And so what do we get out of that?
We got some very clear direction.
A mission statement was established by the council
for each facility at Heather Farm,
the community center and the aquatics facility.
So some of the highlights is the community center
would be local and regional serving.
It would be multi-generational.
It would be flexible to accommodate a balance,
I'm gonna use that word a lot,
a balance of health, fitness, educational,
and camp programming that meets the needs
of all members of the community
while also serving in broader region.
So, this looks like it's very aspirational, which it is,
and we'll talk about some of the limitations in a moment.
Similarly with the aquatic facility,
the mission statement adopted by the council
was this is a multi-generational community
aquatic facility, which again has that balance of programming
between instructional, recreational and competition,
and that we would support family events
and social activities locally and regionally.
So again, that's aspirational.
With that, we had some specific direction
provided by the council, this is in 2020,
I can't remember the year,
but as we went through this process,
oh yeah, confirmed in 23.
So specifics as we went through the design project,
which is we're replacing the aquatic facility
and the community center with one combined facility
at the existing community center location.
That was specifically identified
so that we could keep the aquatic programs running
rather than building on the existing pool site at Clark.
So by building on the community center site,
we can keep the aquatic programs operational
for two years during construction.
So, one assumption there, second assumption,
this is one-story building,
roughly 25 to 27,000 square feet.
I talked about the location.
We're keeping some parameters there.
A portion of the pond would be used for this project,
but the rest of the pond would remain.
The all-abilities playground remains in place.
Other things like the ball fields across the street,
North San Carlos would stay.
Another specific action directed by council
was we're going from three pools at Clark
to two pools in the new facility.
What's not mentioned here is Larky.
That is an important part that we'll talk about
at your next meeting is Larky is part of the aquatic mix
going forward.
And number four is that the existing activities
and support functions would be accommodated
in that new facility.
And I believe we've been able to do that.
So those are key assumptions and principles.
again, back to that aspirational vision
for each of those mission statements,
there are limitations here.
So we're looking at input from the broad community,
recognizing that not everybody comes
to every community meeting that we have.
So in some cases, staff and commissions and council
have to be the ones that represent
that broader community and stakeholders
that don't necessarily have the voice
to come to these meetings.
And the last thing to kind of create a guardrail for us
is the recommendations that staff present to you
be realistic, implementable, and budget-conscious. And so we'll talk about that as we move forward
through the remainder of these meetings. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jocelyn,
Jocelyn Lawrence-Barrish from Nolentam. Jocelyn will walk through the majority of the slides here.
Staff and others, consultants will be available to answer questions, and then we'll come back up
to wrap up. So, Jocelyn. Thanks, Kevin. Good evening. Jocelyn Lawrence-Barrish,
I'm the project manager with Nolentam Architects and we're leading the design effort for this
project with a very wonderful crew of subconsultants from lots of different areas of expertise.
Can you pull the microphone up? What's happened is somebody pulled it down. Thank you.
Can you hear me better now? Okay, wonderful.
Okay, so we started this project during the Your Parks, Your Future
effort and explored the various site options that were possible in this park. As Kevin mentioned,
the community center site was chosen for various reasons. For the new project in the very beginning
we did some test fits with the approximate score footages of the community center and aquatic
center, how they might be laid across the site, how those pools wanted to be in relation to those
buildings, and then in relationship to the pond. From that we developed a conceptual site plan
that was presented to City Council in January and February of 2023 and the conceptual site plan was
really an early effort to say what are all the spaces that are going to be required? Where could
they fit? Can we work with this site? And we came up with a pretty viable solution that we felt
we could move forward with. We'd need more design work in the future but we costed it against the
the budget, it was working pretty well,
we actually did talk to commissioners at that time
about what their feedback might be
and the considerations that we were given in the future
to look at in the design moving forward
was that we need to look at access and circulation,
noise impacts from this project
to the neighboring amenities that already exist,
how the pond refurbishment that is part of,
has always been part of this site assumption could work,
that we're filling in a portion of the pond
to get extra land space,
how the pool deck capacity could work,
the design of each pool in particular,
what recreational pool amenities could be included,
and the architectural style and materials
that this project would include.
And we do have presentation tonight
to show you all of our responses
to those particular pieces of feedback.
But we started actually by talking to the community.
For this specific project, we had a community open house
that also mirrored an online survey.
The same sort of questions were asked in both venues.
And we were looking for input
about how the buildings should look and feel,
how the outdoor spaces could relate to the buildings,
how those outdoor spaces should look and feel,
and what kinds of amenities that folks were looking
to interact with in the recreational pool,
since there is a wide variety of possibilities.
We had about 160 participants
in the physical in-person open house
and about 1,500 survey responses.
So from those responses,
we developed some results for you to quickly go through.
We have the images that were used
to help communicate with the questions we were trying to ask.
The largest of each image is the one
that had the most people selecting it as their favorite.
And in addition, we had a lot of writing comments
and with those comments,
we created weighted word clouds
that sort of let the comments
that were the most frequent pop out at you
and the ones that were less common are smaller in font.
So for the first question,
what's your favorite building in and around Walnut Creek?
People like buildings that seem to fit in
to the surrounding city fabric
and the library is a clear favorite.
For what kind of architecture?
Modern but fits in, light and simple and beautiful.
And you can see some of the projects that were selected
fitting those words potentially. Same would be true of the aquatics portion
wing of the building that it be modern and have natural materials, including
some wonderful images of shaded structures that could work at the pool
deck. Same would be true of building materials. Natural materials inviting and
warm were what was preferenced, so that's what we'll be showing you tonight. At the
outdoor spaces, shade was a concern on people's mind. You can see by the image
they chose and the words they mentioned and that the outdoor gathering spaces
again have shade, use natural materials. It was nice that people had it some
common themes that we felt we could really digest and use in the design
moving forward and then recreational amenities that various ages be able to
use the amenities that they not just be geared toward one particular age group
was the comment most often received and the images chosen were beachfront entry,
various spray water features and current channel for favorites that people wanted
to select. So what we did in the fall of last year was take all of this input we
received from the community as well as the the commissioners feedback from the
conceptual design round and started to work the building plan to try to add and
adapt to some of these comments. And our early efforts yielded a building that
had a little bit more of a compact design to get more pool deck area and
also to get more building frontage against the pool deck since there were so many spaces
that needed to be interacting with the pool deck.
We also consolidated the community center wing so there would be these clear use areas
which we'll go through.
We took these early plans to some key stakeholders and the following list sort of categorized
into three groups where we had a focus on sort of outdoor nature issues with the gardens
either Farm, Mt. Diablo, Audubon, Society Bird Alliance,
Phyclosing Cub, and then folks who were more focused
on the rental aspect of how the community center
could work, the Chamber of Commerce, Catering Companies,
making sure that these would be very rentable spaces.
And of course we spoke with the Walnut Creek Aquatic
Foundation and the various teams that they represent.
We received generally positive feedback
on that early preliminary schematic design plan
and collected the following pieces of feedback
that we have been incorporating since then.
So, the noise impacts and proximity of the trash enclosure
to noise sensitive areas is something that we're,
we have already addressed and will continue to address
until we make sure we feel like we've,
we've done the best that we can with this site.
It is, it's a crowded park and we're trying to make sure
that everybody feels at home there, even the birds,
because those are very important to us personally as well.
The loading areas for the catering services need to work.
that can't be just something that blocks traffic.
And the pool deck capacity and configuration
of design in the pools was something that we heard
pretty regularly from the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation
and their relatively large groups of teams
that showed up to talk to us about that.
So the guiding principles that we have been working under
for the design of this facility
are that the facility be a visual asset to the park,
not something that looks like it sprang up
from out of nowhere.
That it prioritize the support of existing programs
and have possible future expansion as the budget allows.
That it provides space to improve the function
of the existing recreation programs.
So by providing more flexible and desirable event spaces,
we can have not only the current programming
and rental capacity, but more.
And that there be appropriately sized pool support spaces
and changing rooms as well as deck spaces.
And that the views across the pond to the farm,
excuse me, the gardens at Heather Farm,
and the other visual assets around the park
really be taken advantage of and seen as part of the design
rather than in isolation.
So here is the design that we have come up with so far.
It's still in a schematic phase,
there's still room for it to change,
and your comments tonight will be part of
how we change in our direction as we try to realize this
into a constructable building and site.
So we have two different schemes.
They are admittedly very similar.
That's partly to do with how the community feedback
had very common themes.
And so we didn't want to have two schemes
that were wildly different in style
since the style direction we got from the community
was pretty consistent.
So we've got a version that's got an angled floor plan
and more traditional gable roofs in scheme A.
And in scheme B, a floor plan that's more orthogonal
and a more expressive, dramatic roofline.
We like to say that this roofline mimics
the three slopes of Mount Diablo and its neighbors.
Here is how you would see it in plan.
Scheme A has this angled floor plan.
So the community center portion, most of it,
angles a little bit to the east.
The aquatic swing portion of both schemes
it's exactly the same, you'll see scheme bead
is just straightened out.
And we've got the key features of these schemes.
They're the same for most of them,
except for really the differences.
How this angle affects really the atrium entry sequence,
as well as some of the adjacent outdoor spaces.
So the atrium becomes a much more dynamic area to enter.
It pulls you out towards the pond
when the building opens out in this direction,
the way that the two wings are pulled apart from each other.
And it gives you a little bit more of a distinct differentiation
between the community center wing and the aquatics wing
from a spatial perspective.
It's something you'll feel with your body a little bit more
fully.
And then the outdoor spaces are a little bit different in size
based on how these angles work.
Other than that, we've got all of the programming
that we've been working with since the conceptual plan,
including the rentable lakeside room and adjacent multi-purpose
rooms with storage and support.
We've got a separate third multi-purpose room
with support for it as well.
The offices and administrative areas
for the community center and the aquatic center
right across from each other in the atrium
to be able to share some spaces with each other.
Some changing rooms and other kinds of pool support spaces
like lifeguard offices and swim team offices,
offices for some of the support staff
who all really need to look over the pool deck.
It's a little bit of a fight for real estate
to make sure everybody can have a clear view
of what's going on outside in the pools.
And we're continuing to work with
how best to accommodate that.
I'm going to pass things along to my colleague right now
from RRM Landscape Architects.
Good evening, my name is Gina Chavez.
I'm from RRM Design Group
and we're the landscape architects on the project.
And we've also been working on it
since your park's your future.
So it's great to see it coming to fruition.
So there were several principles
that helped guide the site design process throughout.
One of those principles was improving and expanding
on existing unprogrammed recreational uses,
uses such as the pond that extends,
I'm sorry, the path that extends along the pond edge
and other outdoor gathering spaces at the park,
as well as the pond itself,
improving on the functionality and layout of it.
second principle was creating that separation between these active noise
generating uses like at the pool from the noise sensitive elements such as the
natural lake to the north and then the third principle was the inclusiveness of
just all users considering passive informal recreational users as well as
those who use the park for programmed uses. So the site is like Jocelyn said
it's a tight site but it fits quite well as a puzzle piece within these fixed
parameters so to the east you have north San Carlos Drive which stays the same to
the west you have the pond to the north you have the creek corridor and the
natural lake and to the south you have the sacred all abilities playground so
all of those surrounding amenities stay the same and within our envelope we're
work we worked on citing the building so that it creates a buffer between that
natural amenities to the north and then those more active uses like the pools and the playground to the south.
And then we also have, I can't point it out unfortunately, but there's a landscape berm, it's
the bright green space to the left of the recreational pool, and that is to create privacy as well as
sound attenuation between the rest of the park and the active uses. And then also as I mentioned just
improving the pond itself. The northeastern lobe of the pond today is
very stagnant so it creates a bit of a it's just not a very inviting space so
filling that area in gives us more building and outdoor space and it just
improves the circulation of the pond overall. And then of course like I said
we're preserving the playground and the creek corridor to the north. So scheme B
has the same relationships to the site as well as the rest of the park uses,
there's just a slight twist of the building as Jocelyn said so that scheme
A it's canted slightly to the east and it straightens out in scheme B and we'll
look at how that relates to the site and when we look closer at the site in a few
slides. So looking at the circulation of the site we're really working on
improving it. There's a designated drop-off and pickup area and that is for
vehicles for pedestrians and bicyclists and then we're also working on proving
access to the facility and from this facility to surrounding parking lots to
the south of the playground as well as the north lot where the solar panels are
and then also to the ball fields parking lot as well and then just connecting the
upon creating a continuous loop all the way around it.
We're also working on creating access
to the mechanical building and the pool itself,
which is essential for the function of the pools.
And then we're preserving the North San Carlos Drive
alignment, including the intersection and the existing
bike path.
So taking a closer look at how the site relates
to the building, first looking at site A.
So when you arrive at the site, you
have this much more generous welcoming arrival zone.
And from there, you have a couple of different choices.
So you can go straight into the building
where you have this magnificent view of the pond
through the atrium.
And from there, you have several choices within the building.
Or if you go to the right, there's
a little courtyard that you can see
on the east side of the building.
And that is meant for everyday staff use,
but also to be used for event spaces.
So you might arrive here if you have an event
that you're going to and you have
a sign that directs you to the right location.
And maybe you have a cocktail hour here
while you're waiting for your event or ceremony to begin.
And then if you enter the building
and go to the other side, you have your expansive event
patio.
And it looks like it actually is two patios.
So you have a tree in the middle.
And the one with the rounded edge
is adjacent to the lakeside room.
And this is like your main event patio.
It's really meant to create a blurred line
between the lakeside room and the outdoor space
so that you can have this fluid movement in and out.
And you have overflow onto the adjacent lawn.
And that can be used for ceremonies or events,
or even just everyday use, grabbing a cup of coffee
and sitting up there and watching the birds in the pond.
It can be used for multiple activities for the public
and for private events.
And then we have another patio adjacent to the multipurpose
room just below that more rounded edge patio.
And we're seeing that as being used.
It could be rented as a private patio.
It could be used for everyday public use.
Or it could be combined with the patio above it
if you have a large event that you'd
like to rent the space for.
So the outdoor garden is meant to be enclosed.
So that prevents geese from coming in.
Or if you're having a party, you can have alcoholic beverages.
But the idea is that you have an enclosed space there.
And it's set up a little bit higher from the pond edge,
creating a bit of a separation, a few feet above.
And then there are also some additional community overlook
spaces to the south of the event patios.
And we're creating little nooks in there.
But we're also doing things with vegetation,
like stormwater treatment, and making
those part of the landscape feature.
I'm sorry.
Just while you're on this slide, it's a little difficult
to read all those labels.
Could you just highlight them with your mouse?
Oh, you don't have a mouse.
Oh, you do have one?
No, okay.
Kind of maybe from north to south
or however makes sense for you to do that.
Yeah, sure.
Oh, thank you.
All right.
Yeah, so this is the lakeside room right here.
So this is the patio adjacent to that.
And of course it would be shaded as we discussed.
That's a really important element,
this being the west side of the building.
So you can have tables out here,
or you could have everyday lounge chairs.
And then this is the event,
this is the garden, the event garden.
So this is a big lawn, big flat lawn area.
So you could have tables and chairs out there,
or you could have ceremony chairs,
or it could just be a place where you lay out a blanket
and have a picnic or have lawn games.
And then adjacent to this event patio
is the multipurpose patio.
So in here we have a couple of large accent trees
to create some shade,
but we're also envisioning some kind of building awning
on this one.
We're really focusing shade on this larger event patio here
and we're working on some elements
that would make it more flexible, that shade element.
But you could use this whole space as one big patio as well.
And then down here there's some little nooks
and opportunities for the public
to come off of the pathway along the pond
and sit and watch the birds or just watch people walking by.
And then this is that landscape berm
that creates the separation that I was discussing.
Sure.
So scheme B is very much the same.
It's just slightly different in that the strained out building
creates a more direct access to the pond edge.
So this one tilts a little bit, which
creates a little bit more space in the back.
And in Scheme B, you have a little bit more space
in that eastern patio up here.
So both of them take advantage of the amazing views
across the pond to the gardens at Heather Farm,
as well as you do actually have a view from here
to the natural lake as well.
Now I'm gonna turn it back to Jocelyn
and she's gonna go through the perspective renderings.
Thanks Gina.
We looked at these before to check out the difference
between the two roof lines.
You'll notice that what Gina was talking about,
how the angle of the floor plan changes those outdoor spaces
a little bit.
In the angled plan, you've got a larger space to the west here
and a slightly different view of the pond, therefore.
Both of them are pretty nice.
And in addition, it gives you a slightly different access
on this side to the atrium.
Atrium becomes a hinge point.
it's a little easier for a wayfinding.
We have been asked by past commissioner comment sessions
if it's possible to swap out the plans
and the roof lines relative to each other.
Feel free to ask us that question again.
We're happy to take it.
The answer is possibly, there is a way.
So the entry sequence, really we thought
long and hard about this.
This was one of the key design changes
from the conceptual plan, we understand that there are
at least three large different kinds of entry sequences
that we need to nail.
The first is that the building needs to announce itself
as a civic building within the park.
And so to some degree, we've been playing
with these two different schemes to figure out,
how would we best announce that while still being
at an appropriate scale for the park?
And so having uplifted windows,
having a higher roof like this,
they're actually about the same height,
you're just standing a little bit closer to the second one,
allows you to experience the building as something that says,
you have arrived at a major destination within this park,
but in addition to that,
you can see these two different signs we've got going here,
there is an aquatics wing, a community center wing,
we neither want to divorce them so entirely
that they feel like separate buildings,
but we wanna make it clear to people
who are using the pools where they would enter,
and people who are going to a wedding event
where they would enter,
and hopefully to keep these two populations separated enough
that we never have kids in dripping shorts
with next to brides.
This was the directive we're given.
So Aquaticsy would go off to the left.
There is an in and out, into the building,
and then out again onto the pool deck.
Check-in right there to the left.
And then off to the right there is,
you can actually see the gated patio
that Gina was talking about, which could have,
during a rental event, could have an open mode
where large gate swings open,
you could put out signs to say,
welcome to the Carter wedding, et cetera.
But that everyday use actually really be funneled
towards this main atrium entry,
so that folks who may not know where they're trying to go,
or folks who want more information,
folks who are arriving for a community center program,
even folks who missed the aquatics entry perhaps,
could all get direction about where they're going to go.
They would wind up in this atrium.
And so the atrium has active views
onto both of the two building wings.
So there's a large community center reception desk,
as well as a window into the aquatics reception,
potentially a door depending on how the floor plan lays out,
so that everybody who's collected into this funnel
has a place to get to their destination easily,
with views potentially through some of the classrooms
to the various outdoor spaces, since those are so critical
to the function of the building.
We think of this as the indoor community living room version
as compared to those outdoor terraces
that Gina was highlighting that act
as an outdoor living room overlooking the pond.
This is the facade of the aquatics portion of the building
looking over onto the pool deck.
As we discussed earlier,
there's a lot of need to have offices and changing rooms
and even various classrooms having direct access
to the pool deck.
So we've been playing with how to shift some of that
to get more building face directed onto the pool deck,
and this is the current iteration.
Definitely shade, this is the south face of the building,
so we'll have integrated shade into all of these,
all of the building designs,
and the lakeside room, lastly,
a grand space that you could rent for
various types of events, this, however,
being one of the more fun versions of events
that we could see happening in this room
with the expandable multipurpose room
to the east of it for very, very large events, bless you.
That lakeside room would spill over into,
this is the event garden that Gina was describing.
There is a sort of niche with an area for ceremonies,
if that's what you're looking for,
it could also be an instructor's platform for outdoor yoga
or other programmable events
that could be hosted in this area,
but the idea is that you have a view line from here
all the way into the lakeside room
and also out to the pond
that would be to the right of this view.
So when we gave this same presentation to the pros, DRC, and youth commissions
these were the pieces of feedback that we received. This is definitely a condensed
version. The aesthetics were generally well appreciated. The building materials
they liked this as well and seemed to respond to the comments that we received
from community. The inviting architectural style was appreciated. We'd
really tried to have that, you know, welcoming open spaces. There was a
the general preference for the floor plan of scheme A
that's angled.
However, there is also a general preference
for the roof style of scheme B.
So that's where I said,
we can do a little bit of a mix and match.
It won't be a direct one-to-one,
there are different geometries,
but there is a way to have the feeling of B
with the angled floor plan of A,
should we need to go in that direction.
The commissioners, I'm sorry, go ahead.
A question on that roof style versus building floor plan.
Yes.
I did watch the design review commission
and I saw them say that and it's like,
they're the experts, they should have.
What part of the roof style of Scheme B do you think
was what they were really talking about?
Was it the front view of the entrance
where the windows are much taller,
or was it the other elevation or perspective,
the drone view, where it's hovering over that very dramatic
angular shape?
And I think it was different depending on which commission
you're talking about.
I know that the youth commissioners really
loved the idea of the roof line echoing
Mount Diablo, though one of the very astute commissioners
mentioned that perhaps the height differences
should more closely echo Diablo.
They're kind of reversed at the moment,
with the tallest to the left versus how Diablo
is the tallest to the right.
And that's an interesting angle, but none of us
will be hanging over it in a balloon, looking at this angle.
Well, hopefully not very often, yes.
No, that...
I hope not.
So I just kept thinking, but what would I see
if I was standing at the gardens at Heather Farm
across the pond with those two views?
And maybe you can figure that out
in your lovely CAD program and show us a picture.
This view, actually, you would have a sense
of how different this roof line is from across
from the gardens at Heather Farm.
It wouldn't be quite this dramatic an angle,
but you would actually apprehend the difference.
I think really you can see that there's the use of flat roof
in scheme A in order to connect the gables.
And that's what's not in roof B.
And I think that's actually something that we heard
pretty consistently from the Design Review Commission
about, you know, we, they, the Design Review Commission
actually were a little bit split about which roof line
that they liked better.
And they appreciated how the gable roof form
actually directly speaks to the community comments
about modern architecture
it has some more traditional forms in it,
like a gable roof.
But didn't love that they're connected by a flat roof,
which doesn't feel like a civic building.
It feels like something lower in squatter
that's trying to hide itself a little bit more.
So that's a little bit of an elaboration.
Hopefully that answers your question.
Actually, you did answer my question.
I appreciate it.
Wonderful, okay.
So I think we went through all of the perspectives.
Right.
And the pond edge refurbishment got a lot of thumbs up,
especially as Gina mentioned,
getting rid of a stagnant lobe of the pond.
Sounds like a good trade-off.
The continuous path around the pond is a good upgrade
as well as the amount of landscaping and courtyard areas
all received generally positive feedback.
And so then some of the items that we were tasked with
considering as we move forward with the design
is looking at the safety, convenience, and size
of the pickup and drop-off zone
that is currently under design.
the circuitous route to the pool changing rooms
was mentioned that if you're entering,
we'll go back quickly to the plan,
and you can see, I'm gonna get to one
that actually says the names of these rooms.
There we go, I'm not sure you can see it.
Did that mouse disappear?
It's right there, wonderful, okay.
Wake up little mouse, there you go.
So here's the entry to the aquatics wing.
There's a gate here actually that could open
for large events or even when there is a very popular class
to allow people to come in, or a very hot day,
to allow people to come in more quickly,
but the general mode of entry would be
to come into the check-in counter
and then back out to the pool deck.
But here are the changing rooms.
And once you would've come to this facility a few times,
you would know where you're going,
but for first-time users, it could be a little tough
to know you have to go all the way around the corner
to get to the changing rooms.
They're additionally, therefore, the furthest away
from the pools on the pool deck.
So that's something that we've actually been looking
at internally about how to potentially address.
The other things the commissioners talked about were,
gonna need my slides to catch up with me, apologies.
There we go.
Incorporation of sustainability features
and water conserving landscapes.
Each of the commissions had representatives
who asked about the sustainable features
that already included.
We're actually going to have a separate presentation
where we give the council some different options
to look at to address sustainability.
Currently there are sustainable features baked
the design and the cost estimate that we're working with. We were also asked
to look at features that could support visitors arriving not by car. That's so
that's also part of what we're studying with our pickup and drop-off zone design
work. There was definitely an ask by both pros and the youth commissioners to
keep the geese out of the landscape areas and that shade be provided by both
trees and trellises really continuously around the building to make sure that
they're comfortable outdoor spaces and that there be some informal smaller
group gathering spaces not just these large rentable patios. So Gina pointed
out some of those. So at the next City Council meeting we'll be talking about
aquatics. I think Kevin you want to go the rest of this schedule? Wonderful.
Right, so as I mentioned March 5th is the meeting when you will be hearing a
presentation about aquatics. That will be a lot of detail about the pools, the deck,
a bit about the changing room, the bathhouse, and the space around the pools. So that will
be at your next meeting. What doesn't show up here is March 19. We are tentatively planning
to come to talk about sustainability features for this facility, to talk about the essential
services function that could be part of the programming here, to talk a bit more about
the drop off and the parking.
And so that's likely gonna be coming to you
two weeks after your next meeting.
And then other commissions,
the Arts Commission hasn't seen this yet.
They had a preview of it at their last meeting,
but there's a selection panel
who's working on this project,
represented by Councilmember Silva and others,
and so we anticipate going to the Arts Commission in April.
And then once we get past that
and get direction from the council on this whole project,
we start all over again our road tour
we're going to go back to commissions and talk about design development in more specific detail.
That'll be spring, mostly summer, as we look toward the rest of this year. And then again,
construction starting in 25 and opening in 27. So that brings me to the slide I teased earlier,
which is the question that we all have for you as we look to you for your direction.
I'll put the slide back up in a moment. But again, specifically looking at your direction for
for scheme A versus scheme B,
maybe some combination thereof.
And then the exterior, the interior,
the approach sequence, the lakeside room, et cetera.
And so again, I'll put this back up in a second,
but I wanna stop here and see what questions
the council has for staff and our design team.
And then we'll open for public comments.
First hand that went up is the Mayor Pro Tem.
Hi.
Hello.
Great, this is fun.
This is fun.
This is like remodeling my household.
So, the first question on A versus B, there is a portion of the area to the north that
is angled, but the offices are not angled, creating dissonance in my mind.
Why aren't the offices angled?
As with both questions that you're going to have about the building, I'll have our architect
team answered, I'm just pulling up that slide for you.
Josh, I'll probably come up.
Luckily, I watched our project architect
test that very thing out.
It actually narrows, if you angle that as well,
it narrows the entry at the front a lot,
unless you actually make the whole building much larger.
So just by turn, the orange part
is what I'm talking about, that's not,
Because by not rotating, it appears
to be a narrow spot in between the multipurpose room
two and the offices.
Let me see if I can draw with the mouse a little bit.
There we go.
All right.
So if you follow this line, you see where this stops.
Yeah.
That's your greatly reduced front entry.
Exactly.
And then in order to get that entry larger,
you have to make that whole atrium,
and therefore the building a lot larger,
which we're already, you know,
we're comfortably within the 25 to 27,
but we don't want to reach past 27.
Okay, and so you see where the upper corner is
between multi-purpose room two and the orange,
that gap right there works.
Yeah, it's generous and was one of the things
we had to pull apart when we added that angle
to make sure that that doesn't also feel like a pinch point.
Okay, and then looking at A versus B,
the other big difference, of course, is the roofline,
and you're saying you are looking at whether or not
you could do that roofline B with floor plan A?
That's right.
So the biggest challenge actually is this sort of
larger roof expanse right here over the atrium.
It doesn't really work to put that in the angled floor plan.
However, there is the possibility of still having
this cascading series of gables
that gives this more expressive roof line
to really try to minimize the amount of flat roof.
Really felt like the main criticism of scheme A.
Okay, okay.
So now let's talk goose poop.
I'm always reluctant to rely on fencing alone
to deal with goose poop
because they're crafty little critters.
They can fly.
Yes, that is true.
They can fly.
They tend to prefer more open spaces though,
because if they feel trapped, then they
don't know what can come and get them.
So one strategy that you can sometimes do
is plant a line of shrubs.
And then they'll tend to stay away from those areas
and go in the more open areas, just
because they feel safer because they can see what's
coming up from all sides.
Of course, that's not to say you might not get one or two
in there occasionally.
It's a challenge in parks with ponds
that we see quite frequently.
I was just looking at the part of the lawn
where you're talking about, it's off the patio, the event space.
Is that big enough that you might have a problem with geese
feeling happy in there?
I don't know what the, I don't know,
goose happiness, goose comfort, square footage,
if there's a two architects.
Am I going the wrong way?
Thank you.
Yeah, so analyzing the size and the spaciousness,
I think that that's something that we'll continue to look at.
There we go.
Well, there's a close up, a more close up view.
There we go.
So you're talking about this area, right?
Yeah, that long right there.
Yeah, so we're really seeing this as being somewhat enclosed,
not with tall hedges or shrubs,
but having some low ornamental, like very garden-esque,
feeling shrubs in that area to create that enclosure
so that if you are having an event,
you don't feel like you're so open to the rest of the park.
So that would help the geese not feel too free in there.
But yeah, it's definitely something
we'll continue to look at.
and that area there will be fenced.
Correct, so the fence, we're currently in the process
of figuring out the best location for the fence,
but it's somewhere in this zone,
whether it's at the top of the slope
or the bottom of the slope we're still working on.
And then do you, I know when we looked at this
at the conceptual level, they had a rendering
showing the difference in elevation
between the path and the lawn.
Do you have a rough idea of what the difference
in elevation is?
Yes, we have been working with a civil engineer
on grading the site.
So we're picturing this as being about four feet higher
than the path below.
And then the lawn down adjacent to the recreational pool,
is that any time I see a lawn on a heavy slope,
I start to worry about sustainability and durability
of that.
Yeah, so it's actually only about four feet tall,
so that creates a little bit of sound and privacy.
So it's not super steep.
You have to keep it at like a three to one slope,
which makes it mowable.
If you create it too steep, like you said,
you'll have issues with maintenance.
So we're really seeing this as being a nice hangout space
for people who want to just throw their blankets
and towels out on the lawn
as they're hanging out around the pool.
but we would definitely use grass species that are hardy and durable for that type of use.
And then as far as the sprinklers, are you anticipating just sprinkling from the perimeter
of it not having a sprinkler up there on the top of it? We'd have to do the irrigation design to see
how far we can get that the throw of the irrigation heads, but regardless you have them their pop-ups
so that they would recede down below the finished grade so they wouldn't be a tripping hazard.
But yes, it's ideal to have them along the perimeter as much as possible.
Okay.
And then in one of the earlier drawings, I lost track of where, there was a birthday
room involved in the aquatics.
Is that classroom still functional as that?
Yes.
Yes.
And so it was one of their first moves.
right here in the plan and the aquatic swing is the same in both schemes. Yeah
the idea would be that you could also hold classes there but that it be a
place that you could rent and have birthday parties and you would have
access to the pool deck. Okay all right thank you. Councilmember Estelle.
Thank you so much. This is very exciting. After I think 17 years I thought my
hair was gray naturally, it's just you know. So thank you for the question
about the elevation and so it really can't flatten out because there's a gray
differential between the edge of the pond and where you're proposing to place
the community center itself. That's right. The how much of the pond it looks to me
like. The natural area that will be a goose attraction if we're not, the natural
area is actually sitting on the former pond area. Is that my? That's right. The
pond as it currently exists comes right about like this. Maybe that's a little
too far. I like about that. Wow. Very small version of the building and then yes. So
how much of the pond can we, I know I've asked staff this question and I can't
remember the number. Is it something like 15% of the pond can be recaptured
without triggering an act of Congress? It's a little bit more than that, but
they're going through the full process of how we can reduce that
surface water there and how it can be mitigated that's currently under
negotiation with all of the authorities having jurisdiction. And then I wanted
to, and I think you can answer this question because you're the an architect,
could you go to the last slide where it had the next steps and the potential
schedule these documents that were the schematics that we're looking at really
aren't ready to go for bids so what does it take to get I mean I think the idea
was that we go issue these for bid in either late 2024 or early 2025 am I
remembering that correctly that sounds right so that's eight nine months from
now yes we have we have a lot of design in
front of us still. I know it seems like the building is designed. Well it's not.
Exactly. I mean you don't turn this around. What is it? When do we have to be
done debating, you know, A or B, left or right? Right, so what we hope to hear from
you tonight is, is this the correct direction? We've given you a couple ramps
to choose from so that we can come with, come back to you in summer with one, with
one clear building floor plan one site plan that will have received all of this
community input all of the commissioners input your input tonight and and address
all of that in in in one one package as a sort of celebrity but it takes you
some time to go from end of input to here's our package if you're trying to
get to us by mid-summer then when we're talking late April early May I would say
more like July, August. No, no, no, but when, when the, when the debating has to stop.
So tonight, if you possibly could. Tonight, okay. All right, yes. All right. Are y'all in for a good
decision? I just wanted to get it, because this looks like we've got, oh, we could, we've got till
fall and it's like, I don't think so. No, thank you. I'm not an architect and I don't do construction
documents. Yeah, what we have to do between now and when we see you again is
fully design out each of these spaces to be 100% sure that what we've used as
best practices in our experience to craft these spaces actually works for
this specific project. Check it with various different codes and agencies
that might have an opinion about the specific uses, and it's
actually quite lengthy and technical. What we don't want to do is we don't
want to be waffling back and forth between floor plans when we say take it
to the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District and have them weigh
in on one floor plan but then us have a change in their central sanitary
district where the kitchens are moving all over the exactly so that's the hard
work that we'll be doing between now and when we come speak to you next when we
say this is the floor plan this is the floor plan of the building this is the
site plan that we know can accommodate all of the various uses that you want
here for this price tag and we are sure that it can work to be that sure we need
to start from a place right now
where we're pretty clear about what we want here.
Anybody else, Matt?
So thank you.
I think, Jocelyn, my questions
are probably gonna start with you
and then might go to Kevin.
But in terms of scheme A and B,
from a non-architect standpoint,
when I look at it, I like the rectangle
and like the box part of it.
So can you just walk me through
the advantages of the angle
versus kind of the more straight lines.
Yes, and so that's actually one of the reasons
why we have two choices.
I would say that there is some conservatism
versus dynamism, and it's not relative to,
it's to do with slightly more modern
versus slightly more traditional shapes
within a building that is overall still fairly modern.
So it's a little bit more traditional
to have a straighter floor plan.
Spaces are where you expect them to be.
And there's something to that that's helpful,
especially if you're trying to navigate
a space for the first time.
It's easier to say, I know if I turn right,
I'm going to go 90 degrees to another space like that.
The advantage of having the angle is that it highlights,
it pulls you towards, without you even having
to think about it or see signs, the parts of the building
that you want to emphasize.
So the two things that this angle accomplishes for us
is it helps you understand that there's
two distinct uses in the building
since they're pulled apart slightly,
and it says this one side may not be the same
as the other side, you could explore that more.
The other thing is that it opens out into the pond,
and so it gives you, you come into this entry sequence
that then opens you out to a view of the pond
that really helps you understand
this building is interacting with the landscape.
You don't have to have someone explain it to you
instead it's right there for you to say,
oh I get it, we're in a park.
You might think that they've entered from a park,
they should know that.
But there are a lot of buildings within parks
that don't take advantage of that setting.
And when you actually spend time inside that building,
you really could be anywhere.
And so that's really what we're trying to avoid.
We're trying to have that,
keep that experience of the outdoors
while you're in the interior of the building.
And you accomplish that by making kind of on the west side
that more angled,
and then you get a slightly wider perspective
out on the pond and the park.
Exactly it acts like a projection screen in a certain sense
And you get that from the moment kind of you walk into the door the door while you're in that entryway. Yes
Right
Right, so you're sort of shoved out towards the pawn versus not
Exactly exactly
Yeah
Yes, we have to do that to remind ourselves which is which a is the angle a for angle is how I keep track of it
It's true as if you're looking in plan B is box ear
So it does those three things you said it separates out the space
So you just intuitively know kind of this side's the community center this side's the aquatic center. It gives you that wider
perspective on the park
To emphasize that and it's more of the modern plan versus a traditional. That's right. That's right. That's helpful. Thank you
in terms of square footage is
are we replicating about roughly what we have now in terms of community center space and
Bathhouse space the bath house has grown slightly and the community center is about the same as what it is now
Okay, and then I think the lap my last question was probably more for Kevin or staff
Kind of how do you envision?
Each of these patio spaces being programmed especially kind of like
The one off the the lakeside room will that be are you envisioning?
It'll be public when it's not being rented or an include and the other one in front of the building
Yeah, likely not open to the public because they are,
the nature of their use is going to be a special event.
It's similar to what we have at Boundary Oak today,
which is we have the event space up above the first tee.
We generally don't have people just hanging out there,
as you might see throughout the rest of the property,
because it is something that's a little bit higher level
as far as maintenance, and because I'm renting that space,
I wanna make sure that people feel like it's special.
And so our vision now is both that patio on the east side
as well as the event space on the west would be rented
and probably not open to the public.
That's how we envision it right now.
Also means that I can rent it
and then receive revenue for it,
which offsets the cost to maintain it at that higher level.
So that's our anticipation, we think.
And I have some of my recreation rental staff here too.
We anticipate this is going to be in high demand.
And so I want to make sure that's kept kind of pristine.
And so that's our vision today.
It may change as we evolve and see what the potential use is,
but that's my vision today.
And so what are some of the community spaces then
or the outside spaces that would be available?
Yeah, I'm gonna have Gina, if you wanna point those out.
And you're talking the outdoor spaces
adjacent to the community center, not the pools, right?
Kind of the whole facility, yeah.
Go to a site plan.
Actually, other way, sorry.
So we're still developing the design,
so you'll see a lot of green space,
but we're working on creating some nooks and crannies,
especially on this side,
where you have more active public use adjacent to this path.
We're creating some, we have this area up here
that's called the pond overlook area,
but we're really working,
we were just working on it today actually
with the Nolan Tam team,
on extending it all the way across this space
so that you have these different terraces
where people can hang out on benches
or big blocky lounge furniture
and really just have a more informal unprogrammed space.
And then we also have some little landscape spaces in here,
and then just, you know,
I'm not sure about the programmed uses of the patios.
Kevin spoke to that a little bit
and that's still being worked on, it sounds like,
but, oh, and then in the front area,
so we have the big open courtyard in the front.
And it looks blank right now,
but we're working on blowing that up
and showing what all those design elements are.
So we'll have waiting areas for people seating
who are waiting to be picked up,
but we'll also have little congregation areas
for people to just sit and have a cup of coffee
or wait for their kids to finish swim lessons,
just little nodes throughout basically.
So it's hard to tell at the scale
because it's still so zoomed out,
but we're really working on these little spaces currently.
Okay, I think that's it for now.
I might have some roof questions later,
but I'll let it percolate for a little while.
Kevin, please.
Thank you.
I'm going to get a little bit into the weeds on this,
so I'm not sure if it's the appropriate time or not,
but I figure I'll ask it now and you'll tell me
if I should ask it later.
So first of all, did we hear if the scheme A, scheme B,
is it about the same cost?
Yes, they are.
That's what I thought, OK.
And how flexible are the spaces in the community
room, the lakeside room?
Can that be configured in half a dozen different ways?
obviously you can have a much larger space,
but how flexible are we talking about it?
Well, so there is an operable partition right here.
By that we mean it's a movable wall.
So you can stack it and store it away or have it deployed.
It provides pretty good sound barrier between the two,
even though it is movable.
So you could have two events happening simultaneously
in the larger and the smaller of the two rooms.
So there's two spatial modes.
There's either one large room together
for two rooms, one medium, one smaller.
But there are a lot of things you could do
with really different furniture deployments.
So we've got a really large furniture storage room
so that there are, you know, in addition to how you see
with all of this static round table seating
like you would have for a formal event,
there could be all kinds of other kinds
of furniture arrangements to support camps,
to support classes, to support movement activities,
things like that.
Is there a reason why we don't have an option
for a third room?
Just with a moveable partition?
to do with budget, really.
Also to do with the, there's a sort of height
to the ceiling that gets closed off
by having an operable partition.
So here's the perspective.
The perspective that we're looking at of that lakeside room
really looks at the medium size,
the larger two thirds of that room.
And every time we have to lower the ceiling down
in order to make a track for that operable wall,
you lose that height.
you have a less grand space.
So both budget, those walls are pretty expensive.
And also the grandness of this feeling of this room
that gets lost is the reason why it's one wall.
It's specifically the structure of the wall
that's expensive, it's a huge open span.
Well, I'm just curious, was it discussed at some point?
And I don't know what the programming behind all of it,
but is there much need for at times three different events
going on at the same time?
Or frankly, it's, you know, two is gonna be sufficient.
I'm sure that's probably more of a question for Kevin.
Yeah, Kevin can speak to it.
Although I'm sure we did, you know,
Jim tells us whatever rooms we make for him he can fill.
But we can talk more.
Two is busy, three is gonna be too much
for us to do three different events at the same time
with different clients and different times
and different space.
And so for all the reasons that Jocelyn described
from an architectural standpoint
and from a programming standpoint,
I'm gonna drive my staff crazy.
if I say we need to be pushing three events at all times.
So I don't believe one there's,
I mean, there could be demand for it initially,
but I think if we did three events all the time,
people would say there's too much happening here.
And so I'm sensed that.
So two gives us that flexibility
that I think we're looking for here.
One space, two spaces,
and plus we have that other multi-purpose room number two,
which can also be programmed.
Okay, that makes sense, thanks.
And then I heard that the changing rooms
don't have showers and I have a couple of questions first of all before I get
to that they don't they don't have lockers they don't have showers they
have showers inside in indoors they do and we have currently indoors showers
now in the changing room is that right yes you're talking about the aquatic
facility right not in the community true that's true at the other side of the
other side of the building I asked because we yeah yes because we do have
showers at the Shadelands Art Center so I just want to be clear so we don't have
showers in the community center side of the building but yes we have showers
today indoors at Clarkson Center we have showers in the design for the new
facility absolutely indoors. Thank you. Okay I'm back on the A versus B I
thought I had it all figured out. So look at attachment 4.3A which is like
that where you're looking at it from above. Gotcha. Okay that one right there.
Are those two roofs parallel with each other or are they angled? The two gabled
rooflines. It's scheme A, so we're angled. Those two roofs are at an angle to each
other. They are not parallel. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay, they pretty much used up
all my questions, but so we we aren't doing anything about furnishings or
anything like that. That gets on further down the road. That is right. And okay, I
I am concerned about sound,
and you did some kinds of nodding
to what kinds of sounds there are,
but I've been by pool things
where kids are at full tilt,
and are we convinced that the wedding
in the celebration area aren't gonna be overwritten
by a giant birthday party or something?
It's part of how we've designed this site.
So part of how the pools make noise
is also their amplified sound,
and luckily amplified sound, so speakers,
have made design progress since the speakers
you've currently got at Clark.
They can actually be more directionally attuned,
so they're not blasting in every direction,
but pointed specifically towards where people are located
who want to hear that sound
as part of what we'll be taking advantage of.
And then of course, yes, the building mass itself,
it's a single story building,
But as you can see, some of those volumes
are nearly double height.
That tall of a building will block quite a bit of sound.
It actually almost helps that the wedding is on one side,
pools directly on the other, further away
that does less good.
Right next to each other, it actually
provides quite a good barrier.
OK.
It doesn't look like there is a stage.
And the reason I ask that is because a lot of the big events
have bands and things that, and a lot of the rooms
that I have that are of this thought.
I've been in, have stages.
Are we thinking, is that a later decision or?
Yes, you mean inside the room or at the event garden?
Yeah, the idea would be that the lakeside room
remain more flexible but there would be nothing
to prevent there being a temporary stage erected.
It wouldn't be a permanent stage
like you would have at Shadelands, for instance.
But it has a very robust audio visual support system
within the central, more regular,
it won't have to be like,
we're not gonna take B and plop it down on A.
We can't do that at this point, and we wouldn't.
But it'll, in my mind, it will be pleasing,
and it will feel like we'll have these traditional roofs,
but it'll also be artistic.
I'd like it to be artistic also.
So, and I think we will also-
Harmonious, expressive and artistic.
These are all words.
But we will bring back images for you,
and there might be some variations still.
And you might, we don't wanna have a cajillion options
always, there'll still be one option of floor plan,
but there might be some adjustments to the roof
that you can tell us.
Is this what we're, does this meet your expectation?
I don't know about all of you,
but I've never been this excited about a roof before.
The ruse is really important, so I appreciate the discussion really.
And we haven't shown it yet, and the one thing that is good about the flat ruse, those of
you who are advocating for it, is that we do need to put mechanical equipment up here.
And it is something DRC also pointed out, and we are going to have to hide that mechanical
equipment, whether they're screens or wells or something.
So that's going to happen also.
What happens is that at the next phase, it gets more and more real.
still at a schematic design, but all of this people are still invisible you can
look through the people at this one. That's kind of optimistic isn't it? No, but it'll get
more and more detailed and more and more real, but your feedback is really
important and we don't want to disappoint you, so it's important to be